The origins of the permanent Committee for entente between librarians and local bodies (1947-1953)

Abstract

Recent developments in studies on the history of libraries and librarians provide new research horizons able to highlight the deeper dimensions of the life of libraries.
As part of this context, this work focuses on a specific form of written communication of a personal nature: librarians' correspondence. Reference is made to an analysis of some correspondence of distinguished librarians preserved in the historical archive of the AIB, for example the Luigi De Gregori (1874-1947) collection or that of Francesco Barberi, to demonstrate how these collections are irreplaceable and how thanks to them we can have a more complete view of the profession.
The special aspect of this correspondence, within the history of libraries, lies above all in the capacity to reliably rebuild the relation that binds the figure of the librarian to administration bodies, so revealing the double face of a profession that has its own system of values and therefore its own sort of autonomy.
Bearing in mind these aspects, it has been decided to undertake a task of reordering and describing the archive of Giovanni Cecchini, an esteemed exponent of the 20^th century library world.